Guerrero's whole family is undocumented, except for her 13-year
old younger brother, who was born in the U.S. and is a U.S.
citizen. She says that they all work and pay taxes through
their Internal Revenue System (IRS) issued Individual
Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs).

"People always, always point out that we don't pay taxes, which
is a complete lie," Guerrero told Business Insider.

"We have a government issued tax ID number. So the government
knows very well who we are. They know very well where we live and
they have all of our information. I am sure if they ever wanted
to pick us up, since they have our tax ID number, they have our
information. We pay taxes just like everyone else."

According to the Associated Press, in 2006 the then IRS
Commissioner, Mark Everson, agreed with Guerrero when he told
Congress that "the ITIN program is
bringing taxpayers into the system." Furthermore, having
ITIN enables immigrants to contribute to the U.S. economy by
enabling them to open bank accounts, obtain mortgages and
establish a record of residency and taxpaying.

Social Security Administration (SSA) has also taken a positive
outlook on immigration in the past. "Overall, any type of
immigration is a
net positive to Social Security. The more people working and
paying into the system, the better," Mark Hinkle, Deputy Press
Officer at SSA told the AP in 2008. "It does help the system
remain solvent."

While the IRS does not have an estimate of how many illegal
immigrants pay income tax, it has been issuing ITINs to
foreigners without a Social Security number since 1996. Everson
told Congress "many illegal aliens, utilizing ITINs, have been
reporting tax liability to the tune of almost $50 billion from
1996 to 2003."

These numbers are fairly similar to those that Institute of
Taxation and Economic Policy came up with when calculating taxes
paid by undocumented immigrants. Their final figure was
$11.2 billion in 2010. Check out the breakdown of this figure
by state: